Prior to games like 1983's Crystal Castles, most arcade games with a single-player or cooperative multiplayer style were technically endless, not including any sort of actual "ending". If you think about that from a storytelling perspective, that means that many of the most iconic "Golden Age" arcade games always had "bad endings". In Space Invaders, the aliens successfully invade Earth. In Pac-Man, our titular hero will succumb to the ghosts. And in Missile Command... Everything you fought to protect is reduced to rubble. Sure, many of these games didn't actually go on forever, as integer overflow would result in a stage/screen that effectively forced the end of the game, but even those weren't exactly "good endings"; they were called "kill screens" for a reason. Of course, very few arcade games of the time were actually designed with this storytelling concept in mind; the designers were just thinking of fun ways to get people to keep pumping change into a machine. Still, I feel that one the arcade classics of this time to truly nail that feeling of helplessness, that all your efforts are truly for naught since you'll eventually lose in the end, is Stern Electronics' Berzerk, which turns 40 this year.
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| Man, Atari 2600 artwork was just amazing. |
By 1980, Stern Electronics was known solely for its pinball machines, but decided to expand into arcade video games after seeing that market expand, due to the success of Space Invaders. While it'd mainly be responsible for being the American home for many of Konami's early arcade games (Scramble, Amidar, Super Cobra, etc.), the company also had its own division for creating games, called Universal Research Laboratories. One of the employees of URL was a man named Alan McNeil, who one night had a dream about a video game in which he had to fight a never-ending barrage of robots. With that inspiration in mind, McNeil got started on development, though the original intention for it to be a black-&-white game was eventually replaced with color; only the earliest versions of the game used B&W monitors, but with a color overlay on top. When it came time to give this game a name, McNeil had a fitting inspiration: Berserker, a series of science fiction novels by Fred Saberhagen about a never-ending robot menace that aimed to kill all life. Come late 1980 (a Stern production note says November 12), Berzerk was unleashed to the general public, so let's take a look at the game, some of its ports, its lesser-known sequel, & the legacy it's left behind.
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| Not a literal screenshot, but it gives the basic idea of the game. |
Naturally, we'll start with the arcade original. Upon inserting coins or tokens & pressing start, each game of Berzerk starts off more or less the same, in a giant square room with seemingly randomized walls, which are electrified & will kill upon touch, & an assortment of yellow-colored robots more than likely inspired by the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, due to the scanning eye that's noticeable in the head. Yellow robots don't fire back at your green-colored character, known simply as "The Humanoid", so you can use this initial room to get acquainted with the simple controls that allow you to move in eight directions, and while moving you can fire in the same direction with the sole action button. You can destroy all the robots (each awarding you 50 points), and doing so will net you bonus points (10 points per robot that was in the room), followed by leaving out of one of the four exits on each side of the screen... Or you can just leave early, upon which the robots will exclaim, "Chicken! Fight like a robot!". Yes, Berzerk is actually one of the earliest video games to feature speech synthesis, which at the time was not something that was cheap; Stern supposedly spent $30,000 (or nearly $95,000, after inflation) for Berzerk's 30-word dictionary. It was definitely money well spent, though, as the machine would say, "Coin detected in pocket" during the high score list, no doubt surprising passersby & making them curious about playing the game. While playing, the robots would talk often in their unemotional sound, helping give the game a lot of personality, and the staff at Stern definitely had some fun with the tech, as after leaving a room early & being called a "Chicken", the robots would then continue to refer to the Humanoid as a "Chicken" in the following room, in an effort to taunt the player & force them to play more aggressively. Visually, the game isn't anything amazing, but that does work in the game's favor, making it extremely easy to get an instant bead on everything that's in a room upon entering it.
While playing, you might feel that the room layouts & robot spawning are all randomly generated, but in reality they're not, though no one would really be able to tell at first. That's because Berzerk is actually made up of 65,536 rooms spread out in a 256x256 grid (due to restrictions of the 8-bit Zilog Z80 CPU), which alone would be enough to prevent order memorization, but the game does randomize the layout of the gigantic grid on each play, resulting in apparently ~1,024 layouts (876 of which are unique). As you continue playing, the robots change in color, which corresponds to them being more & more aggressive, firing more shots & following you around more steadily. You start with three lives, but can earn an extra life at either 5,000 or 10,000 points (depending on the DIP switches)... And, yes, it's literally a single extra life; Berzerk doesn't reward skilled playing with an abundance of lives. Because of this, it's paramount to learn how to take advantage of the robots in order to earn a high score & live for longer. Simply put, the robots are pretty stupid & will literally do anything in their efforts to kill the Humanoid, including shooting fellow robots that walk in the way of their shots, destroying each other via collision, and even walking into the electrified walls; good thing all of this still counts as points for you. In turn, expert play in Berzerk is arguably as much about manipulating robots into destroying themselves & each other as it is about shooting them yourself & evading their shots, which isn't easy, since shots move faster than you do. You can negate their shots with your own (& vice versa), as well as take advantage of the gap in the Humanoid's sprite separating the head from the body (which has no collision & will allow shots to go through), but in the end you will still die eventually; the robots will win out.
Still, I'm sure people who are unfamiliar with Berzerk might be wondering what makes this game so special. After all, it looks like you can take your time with a room & make sure that you destroy all the robots; what's even the point of running away & be called a "Chicken"? Alan McNeil must have realized this when designing Berzerk, too, because we can't truly talk about this game without bringing up the most iconic part of all: Evil Otto.
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| Seriously, Hiro Kimura's artwork is just brilliant. |
If you spend too much time in a single room, usually at least 10 seconds or so, a small, bouncing, smiley face (in the same color as the robots in the room) will appear & hunt after the Humanoid, moving slowly until all robots in the room are destroyed, upon which he speeds up immensely. That's Evil Otto, an indestructible reminder to get the hell out of the room, because Otto literally just plows through anything in his way to get to you, as he phases through walls & destroys robots upon collision. This single aspect of Berzerk is what helps make it such an iconic arcade game, as you never have the luxury to take your time & maximize your score. Upon entering a room you know you only have a limited amount of time before Evil Otto appears & forces you out, resulting in you rushing to take out as many robots as you can (& likely getting yourself killed doing so), and if you take too much time in your spawning position Otto will easily get you, as he spawns where you do. As for the unique name, McNeil's inspiration was Dave Otto, who was security chief at Dave Nutting Associates, where McNeil had worked at previously. Dave would apparently smile while "chewing you out", lock employees out of the building so as to enforce a lunch break, & even pipe "Beautiful music" into every room; truly, Dave was "Evil".
In essence, Evil Otto is a perfect analogue to early slasher film villains of the time, especially Halloween's Michael Meyers & Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees, though Otto technically predates Jason actually being the killer, since that didn't start until Friday the 13th Part 2 the following year. Much like those horror icons, Evil Otto says nothing (his spawning is announced with "Intruder Alert", but who knows if it's really him saying that) & is emotionless, his smiling visage being nothing more than the equivalent of Jason's (later) hockey mask or Michael's William Shatner mask. Therein lies the beauty of Berzerk's (accidentally?) nihilistic storytelling outlook, because no matter how long you last, no matter how many robots you destroy, no matter how often you escape Otto... You will die, whether it's at the hands of a robot, Evil Otto, or by your own mistakes. In fact, an explosion from a destroyed robot features a smiley face in it, showing the inevitability of Otto. There's no escape from the massive grid of rooms that makes up Berzerk, you're only given a single extra life to earn, and even if you somehow manage to complete all 65,536 rooms, all you'll be greeted with is the game crashing, because there is no ending where the Humanoid achieves freedom or manages to defeat Evil Otto for good. In the world of Berzerk, there is only the eventuality of death, and all one can do is prolong its arrival.
Star Trek's Borg popularized the phrase "resistance is futile", but they didn't first appear until 1989, so maybe Evil Otto & his robot forces can be considered a precursor to that alien race, because that phrase fits them like a glove.
Needless to say, Berzerk wound up being a gigantic success for Stern, with nearly 14,500 arcade units being produced & becoming the company's biggest hit ever, though it found itself a bizarre trio of deadly controversies, all revolving around a now-defunct arcade called Friar Tuck's Game Room located in the small town of Calumet City, Illinois. In 1982, three people were claimed to have been killed by the arcade game itself due to factors brought about by intense gaming sessions, but in reality were either due to a pre-existing health condition that wasn't known of beforehand (Peter Bukowski), was only incidentally related to Berzerk & could have happened with any game (Edward Clarke, Jr.), or was completely fabricated (Jeff Dailey); still, this helped give Evil Otto the image of a video game character that could kill in real life. Regardless, it was this same year that Berzerk finally made it home with console ports, with the most well known being the port to the Atari 2600, programmed by Atari's Dan Hitchens (SwordQuest: Earthworld, Wild Woody). Released in August 1982, one can actually consider this to be the most robust version of Berzerk, and that's mainly due to the 2600's standardized set of game modes & difficulty options. While the "Left/Right Difficulty" switches don't do anything, you do have 12 game modes to choose from, which give you a mixture of how many points give you an extra life (& this time it's an unlimited amount!), whether or not Evil Otto appears (& if you can even kill him, though he respawns just a few seconds later), & whether or not the robots shoot back at you; mode #12 is even the "Children's Version", with no Otto & non-shooting robots. This port even gives Berzerk some backstory, namely that it's the year 3200 & the Humanoid is a prisoner of the Automazeons of the planet Mazeon, which the Humanoid was exploring with a team that all died. While the visuals are standard Atari 2600 blocky fare, they actually carry over the look of Berzerk quite well, and the controls are pretty spot on; if you can, though, use a Genesis controller instead of the 2600's stiff joystick. In fact, I'd say that the robots are more likely to run into walls here than in the arcade, though you move a little slower. Personally, this port was how I first played Berzerk way back in the late-80s/early-90s, as my family had an Atari 2600 before we upgraded to a Sega Genesis, so there definitely is some nostalgia for me.
1982 also saw the release of Berzerk for the Vectrex, a self-contained vector-based console that remains unique to this very day. One of the 12 titles for the console's October 1982 launch, it's a pretty barebones version, but what it does feels about right, though there are two notable differences. Namely, it's much easier to avoid enemy fire in this version, since the shots are literally just short vector lines that can only go so fast, and the Humanoid moves just a bit faster than usual. In turn, though, everyone can fire more shots at once than usual, and Evil Otto is a little bit more far reaching with his bounces. Considering the transition from sprite-based raster graphics to line-based vector visuals, I think it's a solid & unique port, though obviously not the best; while you'll often see as many as 8 robots on screen at once, any more than 4 makes the game notably chug. Also, since the Vectrex relied on overlays to simulation color, this port's the most accurate to those earliest B&W cabinets. Moving on, 1983 saw Berzerk adapted into a curious format, namely Milton Bradley's board game adaptation, which is designed specifically for two players, though a single player could certainly get by. An asymmetric game, one player controls the "Humanoid Warrior", while the other controls Evil Otto (now looking absolutely generic & NOT a smiley face) & six robots, with each player rolling a die and moving around the maze playfield. The objective is for the Humanoid player to get as many points as possible by destroying robots & escaping the maze, while the other player tries to prevent that; winner is whoever has the most points at the end. Traditionally, the game is made up of three rounds, in which both players play each side, and with some restrictions in play (Evil Otto can't move until two robots are destroyed, the Humanoid can't exit until four robots are destroyed, each round lessens the restrictions in movement for whoever's Otto & the robots, etc.), it's honestly a little bit of a deceptively simple game, as you start trying to look at what the other player will do in response to your own moves. The fact that each player is only allowed three lives total as the Humanoid for the entire game, meaning that they can literally lose their ability to earn points early on & could even end the game immediately, also helps maintain the "fight or flight" mentality of the arcade game, to an extent. It may not be a looker, and certainly is no replacement for the actual thing, but it's honestly a neat little board game, and can still be had for ~$20-$30 today. I honestly wouldn't mind a updated re-release of it today with better-looking pieces, and the ability to alter the maze layout.
In February 1984 the Atari 5200 port of Berzerk, done by General Computer Corporation, saw release, which is considered the most arcade-accurate home port of them all, even including some sampled speech. The 5200's notoriously terrible controller hampers it, but there's always emulation to remedy that; a version for Atari's 8-bit computers based on the 5200 version was completed but never released. After that there have been no other official ports, beyond a re-release of the Vectrex port via the Vectrex Regeneration app for iOS in 2013, though people have made homebrew ports for the Sega Genesis (Paul Lee; 2010) & NES (Parisoft; 2019), while the 2600 version was hacked back in 2002 by Mike Mika (now of Digital Eclipse) to include some speech & more arcade-accurate colors. There's even a spiritual successor by indie studio Aetherbyte called Insanity for the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD, which came out October 2009, which later received an Xbox 360 port in 2011 via Xbox Live Indie Games (a.k.a. it's no longer available for download), & Aetherbyte also made a free downloadable Christmas-themed variant called Insantaty.
Naturally, with the original arcade game being a success, it would only make sense for a sequel to be put into production, and Stern did exactly that, with Alan McNeil returning to design. The end result is 1982's Frenzy (not to be confused with the 1984 Qix clone for PCs by Micro Power), which came out around the time Berzerk's first console ports were coming out, and in many ways it is the superior game. This mainly comes down to some gameplay differences, with the biggest one being that walls are no longer electrified, so anyone (Humanoid or robot) can now touch them without dying. In turn, walls now come in two forms: Dotted & Solid White. Dotted walls can be destroyed, opening up new offensive & defensive options, since you can shoot at robots through walls (& vice versa), as well as open up new escape options; sometimes, you'll even spawn in an enclosed space, requiring you to blast open a wall. Solid White walls are reflective surfaces, allowing shots to bounce off of them, giving everyone more indirect ways to shoot each other. Another notable change is that Evil Otto can now be killed, though it takes three hits to do so, with the first two changing Otto's face to a neutral one & then a frowny one. Similar to the Atari 2600 port, though, Otto will just respawn instantly, moving faster than before & saying, "Charge Attack Shoot Kill Destroy!". Finally, every fourth maze features one of four bonus elements. In the Power Plant, you can shoot at the plant itself, which will temporarily disable all robots, allowing for easy kills or escape; robots can still shoot back you, though. In the Central Computer room, shooting the computer will drive all robots crazy, making them move & fire erratically, while also allowing the walls to destroy them upon contact. In the Robot Factory, robots are endlessly spawned, making it impossible to get a maze clear bonus. Finally, the Big Otto room features the titular giant version of Otto in the center, unmoving (though he frowns if you destroy all the robots), but if you kill Evil Otto in this room, Big Otto gets angry & immediately sends out four Evil Ottos to pounce on you at max speed. Unlike the first two special rooms, which have their features surrounded by dotted walls, the Robot Factory & Big Otto are surrounded by reflective walls with small openings in the corners, but shooting either does nothing.
Beyond those changes, though, the gameplay in Frenzy is more or less the same as Berzerk, though the robots have also been changed. Instead of the single Cylon-esque form, they now come in two forms: Skeleton & Tank. Skeleton robots are thinner & harder to hit from above or below, and colliding with either doesn't instantly kill you, though now being around them when they explode will. Still, the general gameplay loop remains the same, only now with more of a focus on directly destroying robots yourself, instead of trying to manipulate them into blowing each other up, along with the four special rooms offering their own changes to the formula. However, one can definitely argue that a lot of the simplistic charm of Berzerk is lost in Frenzy, due to the changes in gameplay, the more complex room layouts, the (admittedly) goofier-looking robots, and the fact that there just isn't as much talking in the sequel, as the robots still talk, but only in specific moments, & talk of "Chicken" only happens in the Robot Factory; also, the red & white walls give a less bleak mood than the dark blue walls in Berzerk. Then you combine all of that with the fact that Berzerk's Atari 2600 & Vectrex ports were out around the same time, if not slightly later, which meant that people could get their robot-shooting fixes at home, and it's easy to see why Frenzy wasn't anywhere near as successful as its predecessor. In the end, it really depends on what you prefer more: The snappier & more frenetic action of Frenzy, or the slower, more subdued mood of Berzerk.
That's not to say that it was completely forgotten, though. While Berzerk saw the lion's share of home ports, Frenzy did see one console release in February 1984 on the ColecoVision, ported over by Davis & Nussrallah & Associates. At the time, the ColecoVision was the most powerful of the three major consoles before "The Crash", with its main appeal being in delivering the most arcade-accurate conversions possible, and this port of Frenzy is an excellent example of that. While there is no speech to be heard, you do get little songs heard every few stages that aren't anything amazing, but they're a nice little replacement. Otherwise, outside of a different color palette (one that arguably is more dour), it's essentially the same game as the arcade, though you are given four difficulty options, the option for two-player alternating, and you can even damage the Robot Factory & stop it from spawning robots; it's also awesome how the game can cram so many robots on screen, without a single drop in performance. It's a shame that the ColecoVision tends to only be looked at as an also-ran in the second-generation console war, because its ability to deliver such close-to-the-arcade ports for the time is kind of amazing, as it used the same Zilog Z80 CPU that powered many arcade games of the time (including Frenzy), and its influence in gaming history isn't talked about enough. Namely, Sega's SG-1000 used the same exact CPU and video & sound processors as the ColecoVision, which has since allowed people to literally port SG-1000 games to Coleco's machine, while Nintendo's Masayuki Uemura considered the console the bar to surpass when designing the Famicom. Beyond that, there were also UK-exclusive ports for the ZX Specturm computer in 1983... Yes, I mean plural. Neither were officially licensed, but both Century Software & Spectrum Games Limited produced their own ports released on cassette tape the same year, though both technically are more Berzerk than Frenzy, as neither features variable wall types & all of the robots are Cylon-esque; Century's version also looks to add in some extra obstacles, like landmines.
Afterwards, things quieted down with Frenzy for 30 years, when all of a sudden things started happening with it again. In 2013, programmer Bob "PacManPlus" DeCrescenzo revealed on the AtariAge forums that he had restarted his efforts in porting Frenzy to the Atari 7800, even later revealing that he managed to get Alan McNeil himself to assist with the port; as McNeil said, "You can mention me. We are trying to finally get a real version of Frenzy on Atari." It's honestly rather impressive looking, with new additions like two-player competitive & cooperative modes, and even the option to play in Berzerk or Frenzy style, effectively giving you both games in one! The final version of this homebew would then make its debut at Portland Retro Gaming Expo that October, before being made for purchase at the AtariAge store just before Halloween 2013; it's still available to this day, in fact. Not content with just that, however, DeCrecenzo decided to follow all of that up with a port of his port to the NES, but while it was apparently completed back in 2016 this version wouldn't become publicly available until March 23, 2020. The reason for the wait was because Coleco Holdings actually got into contact with DeCrecenzo & officially licensed his NES port for a planned "Coleco Evolved Mini Arcade" unit, which was meant to act as the fulfillment of an old VFD tabletop version originally planned for release back in the early 80s; DeCresenzo had previously worked with Coleco Holdings to produce a Mini Arcade for a Rainbow Brite game. While a Kickstarter campaign did happen in September 2019, it was nowhere near successful, not even reaching 1/3 of the planned $65,000 goal, and with that not happening the NES port finally made its way online for download. Compared to Parisoft's (later/earlier) Berzerk port, DeCrecsenzo's version of Berzerk in this game definitely feels like "Frenzy in a Berzerk Shell", resulting in a slightly different gameplay feel, & Parisoft's port has clearer-sounding speech. As a Frenzy port, though, the NES version (&, I'm sure, the Atari 7800 version) is absolutely stellar, & arguably better than the ColecoVision version.
While all of that was happening, though, AtGames had also licensed the ColecoVision port of Frenzy for inclusion in its ColecoVision Flashback plug-&-play console in 2014. Not much else to say there other than it's a decent emulation of the game, right down to the ColecoVision's phone-looking controller not being ideal to use, but I'd argue it still works better than the 2600's joystick. The game was listed on the front box art, too, showing that Frenzy is considered one of the most iconic games for the ColecoVision, so that's cool. Though AtGames has a more than deserved reputation for its utterly lackluster Genesis plug-&-plays, which Sega thankfully has stopped letting them do, their Atari-era console reproductions are generally better; not great, but decent enough to have some fun with. Also, since this specific one uses composite cables for its audio/visual inputs, find an old CRT to plug it into for a more authentic feel! Unfortunately, this unit is long out of production, so it's starting to go up in price. Personally, I had a ColecoVision as a kid in the 90s, so I also have some nostalgia for it & I bought one of these when it came out. At the end of that same year, AtGames also released a digital version of ColecoVision Flashback on Steam with a reduced game list (40 instead of 60), but Frenzy survived the cuts; it looks to be a rather barebones release, though, so take that into consideration.
[Personal Note: Not long before this article went live, my ColecoVision Flashback just up & died. It turned on & showed the color bars that it usually starts with, but the Flashback program itself just refused to boot. AtGames, am I right?]
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| Got to show some respect for the Japanese Atari 2800 box art, complete with katakana title! |
While its visuals & general gameplay loop may be simple, there's no doubt that Berzerk absolutely hooked people back in the early 80s, and its influence on later games is absolutely undeniable. In 1982, Cathryn Mataga created the game Shamus for Synapse Software, which was heavily influenced by Berzerk but featured a more cohesive overworld to it. That same year, Eugene Jarvis & Larry DeMar of VidKidz created Robotron: 2084 for Williams, which took Berzerk's general concept (plus some of George Orwell's 1984) & turned it into an insanely fast-paced twin-stick shooter, becoming the game that popularized the control scheme; this game is also likely a big reason why Frenzy failed in arcades. Berzerk has been referenced throughout the past 40 years numerous times, as well, from a catchy track on Buckner & Garcia's 1.2 million-selling Pac-Man Fever album, to various other songs by Caustic Window (a.k.a. Richard "Aphex Twin" James) & even Eminem, music artist Brian "Humanoid" Dougans naming himself after the game, and appearances on shows like My Name is Earl & Futurama, among many others. Evil Otto has even been celebrated as one of the greatest video game villains of all time, even if part of that was due to being incidentally involved with actual deaths. Not just that, but Otto's basic concept of an indestructible enemy that forces the player out of an area would also become often imitated, even as early as Exidy's Venture in 1981.
Also, I highly doubt that Berzerk was an influence on Kentaro Miura's iconic manga, Berserk. In fact, the katakana titles for each are pretty different, the game's バザーク/Bazaaku (which isn't even accurate to how the word is even "spelled" in katakana) to the manga's ベルセルク/Beruseruku.
The one thing that has eluded Berzerk, however, is a new official game; there have been many fan works, but nothing official since Frenzy. During the 90s & 00s, many "Golden Age" arcade classics from Atari, Namco, Konami, Taito, Williams, & others were revived, re-imagined, & rebooted, but Stern's biggest arcade hit never saw that luxury. A big part of that, understandably, was due to Stern going out of business in 1985, though it's not like the company's legacy ever really left. Data East purchased Stern's assets that same year & entered the pinball business, before eventually selling that division to Sega in 1994, when it was #2 in the market & owned 25% of it. Sega, in turn, would give it a go before selling the pinball division in 1999... to Gary Stern, son of Stern Electronics founder Sam Stern and the man who had founded Data East Pinball. This resulted in the founding of Stern Pinball, which still operates to this day & is the de facto leader in modern-day pinball. While it's not exactly known if Stern's video game properties carried over throughout all of this, it's not out of the realm of possibility if Berzerk & Frenzy had actually been the property of Data East & Sega during the 90s (& neither company just didn't know), and is now (effectively) back in the hands of Stern; after all, AtGames & Coleco Holdings had to get the rights from somewhere. I did try to contact Stern Pinball about this, but I received no response. Still, one can only hope that some independent developer might try seeing if they can revive Berzerk in some official form, because I think there's still a way to re-imagine it as a more modern game. Hell, Stern should just hire Code Mystics to do a collection of Berzerk & Frenzy in all of their various forms (arcade, 2600, 5200, ColecoVision, & get into contact with DeCrescenzo for those 7800 & NES versions), similar to what they did for Atari Flashback Classics. As for Alan McNeil, he sadly passed away on December 29, 2017 at the age of 66, with his most notable work following Berzerk being having helped create MacroMind VideoWorks II & Macromedia/Adobe Director.
RIP to Alan McNeil, and thank you for creating such an iconic game. Happy Halloween.
Berzerk & Frenzy © Atari, Inc. (formerly Stern Electronics, Inc.)
Berzerk Board Game © Milton Bradley Co.
Berzerk Vectrex © GCE 1982
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